Lessons from a floral flunkout

I had high hopes for an amaryllis bulb my husband bought before Christmas. I planted the bulb according to instructions, and gave it the water and sunlight recommended. Grudgingly, it sent out its leaves, but never a stem or a bloom. Sadly, I nurtured a floral flunkout. It didn’t even produce one brilliant trumpet flower to cheer our dining table on those gray winter days. So recently I withheld water and let it go dormant, curling up its wilted, yellowed leaves for storage.

I thought of how this plant is like people who plod through life with an attitude of ingratitude. They have so much potential, but they choose to dwell on the negative and never bloom for God.

In saying that, I am aware that when I point my index finger at someone’s neediness, three of my fingers are pointing back at me. I need to regularly examine my heart for ingratitude and confess it to God, asking Him to help me change that behavior: “Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me” (Psalm 19:12).

In her book Choosing Gratitude (Moody, 2009), Nancy Leigh DeMoss spoke to this issue. She said we are prone to expect a lot from others and life and, no matter how much we get, it’s never enough. She adds: “Needing God but not always wanting God, we expect others to take the place of God in our lives, depending on them to guide our decisions, to love us unconditionally, to provide for us emotionally, physically, socially, totally.” Inevitably, she adds, people will disappoint us. Instead of turning to God, grateful for His faithfulness in meeting our needs, we let “those unfulfilled expectations…turn to resentment that poisons our hearts and relationships” (p. 53).

In other words, we become like a stubborn, bloomless amaryllis. We don’t do what God created us to do: honoring Him in the work place or in raising a family, serving Him in the strength of spiritual gifts, and being His channels of love to the hurting.

I’ll tuck my dead bulb in a shed for another year, and give it another chance next year. That’s what God does for us. He gives us second chances when we’ve gotten muddled in failures and ingratitude. For years I’ve cherished this passage about God’s desire for us to claim fresh starts: “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18-19).